tompeters.com asks ...

Kathryn, you've co-authored a book with Hank Wasiak called Change the Way You See Everything Through Asset-Based Thinking. What is asset-based thinking?

KC: Asset-based thinking is looking at yourself and the world through the eyes of what's working, what strengths are present, what the potentials are. Deficit-based thinking is looking at yourself and the world through what's not working, what's wrong, the gaps.

I think we're all generally in the deficit-based thinking mode most of the time, aren't we?

KC: Most of our research, corroborated by others, tells us that people have a bias towards deficit-based thinking that follows the old 80/20 rule. Eighty percent of the time, we're on the alert for what's not working, what the mistakes are, what course corrections are needed. Maybe if we're lucky, twenty percent of the time we're really focused on the upside and how we can leverage that.

Why do you think asset-based thinking is better?

KC: In this particular age and phase of society, with globalization and the very chaotic nature of change, as Tom Peters writes about, when we focus primarily on the deficits, it holds us back. We may be able to correct the mistake, but we've lost the opportunity. There are many people who are capable of asset-based thinking. They just have to be introduced to it. It becomes an intentional way for you to navigate through your day.

How do I become an asset-based thinker?

KC: Asset-based thinking is a choice. Some people think optimists are born, not made. But it's not a personality trait. If you want to be an asset-based thinker, get to know your strengths and capabilities. Oftentimes we know our gaps and our shortcomings a lot better than we know our strengths and our capabilities. I call getting to know your strengths "reducing the blind spot." We do need feedback from others to take an inventory of our talents. When we hear the word "feedback," we all sort of duck and hope it doesn't hit too hard.

But the truth is, asset-based thinkers spend five times more effort and energy knowing what their strengths are and what they have to leverage than they do their gaps. It's a complete reversal of the way we've all been trained through school, when we used to get a grade based on how many items we got wrong. Teachers, coaches, and parents all thought they were doing us a big favor by showing us how we could improve.

The actual research shows that if you want to learn something, anything that is complex or interactional with other human beings, focusing on what's been done well is the ticket to accelerating your progress and to reducing that cycle time that we all hate when we're trying to learn something new.

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